Obama’s Pen-Pal Gets Some Good News

Natoma Canfield, the Ohio woman who has become a symbol for the White House of what’s wrong with today’s health care system, doesn’t have health insurance but will receive care and won’t lose her house.

A spokeswoman for the Cleveland Clinic, where Canfield is being treated, said the medical center is helping Canfield apply for Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, as well as other assistance. “We won’t put a lien on her house, and we’ll work with her just like we would with any patient to help get her enrolled in programs that she may not be aware of that she can apply for,” said spokeswoman Heather Phillips.

Canfield, a 50-year-old self-employed cleaning woman from Medina, Ohio, wrote to President Barack Obama about her plight in December. He wrote back last month. Her letter, urging passage of health care legislation, was read at a White House press briefing earlier this month. Obama read the letter to insurance executives, and asked Canfield to introduce him at a speech on health care Monday in Strongsville, Ohio. Canfield, who was undergoing treatment for newly diagnosed leukemia, could not attend, but her sister, Connie Anderson, served as a stand-in for the event.

Canfield told the president she gave up her health insurance after her premiums rose 40%, and she could no longer afford both the insurance and her house. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs later said Canfield was someone “who made a decision to give up her health care to keep her house, a gamble that she’s lost.”…